Our road to Perdition

Wednesday

Jun 13, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 13, 2007 at 7:08 AM

Carl Hiaasen

What happens when a sleazy congressman from Alaska comes sniffing around Florida for campaign donations?
He gets the dough, and $10 million magically materializes to build a road through sensitive wetlands for a friendly developer.
First exposed by The Fort Myers News-Press and Naples Daily News, the saga of Coconut Road is a classic illustration of how taxpayer dollars are used to rape Florida and pay off political favors.
This time the culprit is Rep. Don Young, a Republican from Alaska and a notorious shill for oil companies, developers and industry lobbyists.
Until January, Young chaired the House Transportation Committee, where he proudly larded U.S. transportation bills with wasteful pork, including the now-scuttled "bridge to nowhere" - a $223 million span to an Alaskan island occupied by only 80 souls.
In February 2005, Young took a private plane to Florida, ostensibly to discuss the interstate highways. A more compelling reason for the trip was to attend a political fundraiser in his honor at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Fort Myers.
The event was organized by Daniel J. Aronoff, a developer of mobile-home parks and real estate. The name might be familiar to old-timers; in 1979, Aronoff's father, Arnold Y. Aronoff, pleaded guilty to mail fraud in a racket that sold Florida swampland at jacked-up prices. Young was undoubtedly delighted to schmooze with Daniel Aronoff, whose family heaps tons of donations upon GOP candidates and political action committees.
Indeed, the fundraiser was bountiful for the wayfaring Alaskan - he raked in more than $40,000, most of it from southwest Florida builders and developers, including the Aronoffs. Soon afterward, Young inserted into the 2006 transportation bill an "earmark" for $10 million to extend Coconut Road, a thoroughfare in the booming Estero area of Fort Myers, and to connect it by an interchange to I-75.
For a while, nobody admitted knowing how the project got funded, including Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart and Rep. Connie Mack IV, in whose district Coconut Road lies. Mack's spokesman hailed the earmark as "an unforeseen and exciting addition" to the budget. The mystery was solved when details of the Young's visit to Fort Myers came to light.
The $10 million giveaway was Young's way of thanking Aronoff for the fundraiser. Aronoff owns nearly 4,000 acres east of the interstate, and extending Coconut Road would fabulously enhance the value of his property. Mack insisted that he never sought the $10 million, and was surprised to learn that Young had set aside the money.
"At the end of the day, this thing got stuck in there unbeknownst to us and having nothing to do with us," Mack's spokesman told The New York Times last week.
So, southwest Florida residents are supposed to believe that their own congressman was clueless about a major road project being launched in his own district and cooked up by some guy from Alaska.
Mack is either lying or he's been asleep at the switch. In any case, he piped up about Coconut Road last year.
It happened after the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization, citing environmental issues, twice voted against starting a study of the proposed I-75 interchange.
Young was miffed, and on Jan. 23, 2006, he fired off a letter to the planning agency in which he threatened to rescind the money. Eight days later, Mack chimed in with a letter of his own.
The agency reversed itself and agreed to do a study. Fortunately, many regulatory hurdles remain. Unfortunately, southwest Florida is a place where such hurdles often disappear after a few high-placed phone calls.
Reports by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers and even the Federal Highway Administration have concluded that extending Coconut Road could harm a tract of fragile wetlands that filters and supplies fresh water to Lee County residents.
On June 15, the Lee County MPO again takes up the Coconut Road debate. The political landscape has changed - most notably, voters have replaced two pro-growth county commissioners.
With Democrats controlling the U.S. House, Don Young no longer rules the Transportation Committee, and in any event is distracted by other problems. Mack seems to be trying to put miles between himself and the project, but some other politician is bound to step in and play pimp for the developers.
It's Florida, after all. There's still raping to be done.
Carl Hiaasen writes for the Miami Herald.